


Swept By the Tempest (Of Your Love)

by AgentStannerShipper



Category: Star Trek: The Next Generation
Genre: Aftercare, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Backstory, Consensual Non-Consent, Drug Addiction, Episode: s01e03 The Naked Now, Episode: s01e23 Skin of Evil, Episode: s02e09 The Measure of a Man, Extremely Dubious Consent, F/M, Flashbacks, Hurt/Comfort, Minor Character Death, Rape Recovery, Rape Roleplay, Safewords, Tasha Yar Lives, Trauma, Trauma Recovery, Underage Rape/Non-con, Underage Sex, and tasha does a lot of healing, android morality programming, data is extremely sweet, nonlinear storytelling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-01
Updated: 2020-04-01
Packaged: 2021-02-28 17:08:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,636
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23430697
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AgentStannerShipper/pseuds/AgentStannerShipper
Summary: Turkana IV is a terrible place to grow up, but everyone already knows that.Tasha is healing. Mostly on her own, but sometimes with a little help from the people who love her. It's more than she ever thought she'd have.
Relationships: Data/Tasha Yar, past Tasha Yar/others
Comments: 10
Kudos: 42





	Swept By the Tempest (Of Your Love)

**Author's Note:**

> All I wanted was to write a kinky cnc scene for Data and Tasha, and then angsty backstory decided to intrude. I like what came of it, so I can't be upset. To be clear: there is rape roleplay. There is actual rape. These scenes are not the same. There is dubious consent between Tasha and other characters, and full and explicit consent between her and Data. This fic is dark at times (very dark - read the tags with care, and let me know if I missed anything), but I like to think it's full of hope. This is a story about coping, and about love. The trauma (rape, addiction, etc.) takes place in Tasha's past. The present, with Data, is about recovery. I hope you like it.
> 
> Many of the backstory details have been borrowed from Memory Beta. I have not read the books. I expect they play out differently than my version. I expect Adin is less terrible a person, for one. But this is the story I wanted to tell.
> 
> Title is from a poem by Sara Teasdale, "I Am Not Yours."
> 
>  _I am not yours, not lost in you,  
>  Not lost, although I long to be  
> Lost as a candle lit at noon  
> Lost as a snowflake in the sea_
> 
> _You love me, and I find you still  
>  A spirit beautiful and bright  
> Yet I am I, who long to be  
> Lost as light is lost in light_  
>    
> _Oh plunge me deep in love - put out  
>  My senses, leave me deaf and blind  
> Swept by the tempest of your love,  
> A taper in a rushing wind_

It started simply enough.

Tasha smiled at Data, and tapped her lips with one finger. The android stepped into her space, tilting his head and bending to press a soft kiss to her mouth. It was almost achingly gentle; Tasha had seen Data throw two-hundred-pound men around like ragdolls, had seen him lift debris several times his own weight over his head without strain. He was holding back.

“Harder,” she murmured, looking up into innocent yellow eyes blinking back at her. “I’m not going to break.”

***

_Tasha’s drunk, or near enough, but she doesn’t mind. Once upon a time, drunk had been her preferred coping mechanism for this, before the counselors had eased her away from it and sex had become almost nonexistent. Drunk feels good, her whole body buzzing, and she wonders if this is how Data feels all the time, electricity humming through his circuitry and lighting him up inside. She wraps her arms around his neck, nose to nose, and plasters herself against his front until she can feel him – fully functional and hardening in his uniform jumpsuit, pressing into her hip._

_She kisses him, long and slow and deep, and laughs when she bites down on his lower lip and he startles. “Follow my lead,” she purrs, and grips him hard enough that skin would bruise._

***

Tasha cuddled into Data’s side, both of them wrapped up under a throw blanket on Data’s sofa. She was only half back in her uniform, the jumpsuit on but not zipped, exposing a v of her skin under the covers. She watched Data’s hand move under it, warmed fingers tracing geometric patterns onto the skin of her stomach, and then looked at him more fully. Data was completely dressed, zipped and perfect, apart from a slight mussing of his hair. With his free hand, he typed at a PADD. He wasn’t looking at her.

Tasha pressed a kiss to his shoulder, and Data paused. She turned, rubbing her cheek against his arm, feeling the mechanical muscles shift beneath the skin. “You’d never hurt me, would you, Data?”

Data set the PADD aside. “My programing prohibits me from intentionally inflicting harm,” he said. “I was designed to value life.” He hesitated, and when he spoke again it was accompanied by a gentle brush of his hand, stroking the hair out of her eyes. “I may hurt you inadvertently, but I will never attempt it on purpose. You are safe with me.”

She studied his face. There was a softness to it. Tasha wondered if she was imagining it, or if he’d been built that way. “I failed the Ethics and Moral Principles course at the Academy my first year,” she told him. “Did you know that?”

“I did not.” Data was watching her too. He tilted his head. “I also failed that course when I attended the Academy. I was unable to accommodate my programming, to argue against the principle that all life is sacred.”

“Funny,” Tasha murmured, turning away from him again. She closed her eyes, and focused on the shifting of his arm against her cheek. “I couldn’t argue that it was.”

***

_“I thought you wanted gentleness,” Data says, after. He’s lying beside her on the bed, several inches of space between them. Tasha’s pretty blue dress is hiked up around her thighs; his uniform is on the floor. She still aches where his hips pounded against her, and she can feel him leaking out. Her lips are bruised from kissing, and the rest of her is bruised from his hands, his mouth. She’s still drunk, and she thinks he is too. It still feels good._

_She turns over onto her side, grinning. She likes him like this, his bioplast skin flushed deeper gold, his hair in disarray. “Data,” she says. “That_ was _gentleness.”_

***

Tasha moaned, breathless, her voice rising in pitch as she let out noises that would embarrass her with anyone else, little _hnn, hnn, ohh, ohh_ noises that had made Adin cover her mouth with his hand until she managed to bite them back. Data drank them from her lips, face to face, rocking slowly into her even as Tasha clawed at his shoulders and tightened her legs around his waist. He was thick inside her, angled just right so that every gradual thrust rubbed against her just so, and Tasha whined at the feeling, her head thrown back against the pillow, panting against Data’s lips.

“Harder, baby, please,” she begged. “You’re not going to break me, _come on_.”

Data picked up the pace, eager to please, and his hand snaked between them, flicking Tasha’s clit with skilled fingers, but still gentle, and Tasha tipped her head back and cried.

***

_She’s four years old when she learns the word sex. She hurts all over, all the time, shaking from a need she doesn’t understand until her mother slips something under her tongue and everything feels good again. She sucks on it as she sits in front of her mother, kneeling obediently as her hair is braided._

_“That’s my good girl,” her mother whispers when the crying stops and she’s floating on a cloud of daydreams, her mother’s fingers moving swiftly through her hair. “You’re such a good girl when you’re quiet. And so pretty.” The last words are wistful, for reasons Tasha doesn’t fully understand._

_“Is it bad to be pretty?” she asks._

_“It’s terrible,” her mother says. She tugs a stray hair back into place. “There’s something men want from girls, but they like it best from pretty girls.”_

_“What do they want?” Tasha has seen men. Not many, but she has, peering out from around the corner, watching as her mother goes to her knees or lifts up her skirts. Tasha doesn’t understand this ritual yet, but she will, and her mother always comes back with food, and sometimes with the little squares she calls joy dust, dividing it all up between the two of them._

_“Sex,” her mother says, and there’s a heft to the word in her mouth, enough weight that Tasha repeats it, getting a feel for the word, because it sounds important and Tasha wants to remember it._

_“What’s sex?” she asks._

_Her mother pets her hair. “Sex is what men do to girls to feel good,” she says._

_“Good like joy dust?”_

_“Better than joy dust. They go inside you, and it makes them feel so good they leave a part of themselves behind.”_

_Tasha wrinkles her nose where her mother can’t see. It sounds messy, but Tasha wants to be a good girl, a big girl, mature enough to know about important things like sex. “Does it feel good for girls too?” she asks._

_Her mother hesitates. “It can,” she says finally. “Sometimes. If you’re prepared for it. And if the man does it a certain way.”_

_“Better than joy dust?”_

_“No.” Tasha’s mother kisses the top of her head. “Nothing is better than joy dust. Now hold still.” Out of the corner of her eye, Tasha sees her mother pick up their knife, and she obligingly stills. There’s a slicing sound, and then beautiful blonde tresses, once long enough to reach Tasha’s knees, are falling into the dirt by her feet._

_***_

“Not for me, thanks.” Tasha smiled politely, passing the bottle away from the dignitary who proffered it to her. He frowned, and Tasha felt every muscle in her body tense, ready to fight. He opened his mouth, objection visible on his tongue, when Deanna took his arm, beaming brightly, and guided him away, explaining in lower tones about human rituals involving alcohol, and how as the security officer on duty, Tasha would be expected to abstain.

She breathed a minute sigh of relief, and turned as Data rejoined her, a pair of glasses shaped like champagne flutes, but with a rounded bulb on the end, balanced carefully in his hands. “Are you alright?” he asked softly, passing her a glass.

Tasha took it, staring at the deep red liquid within. “Why do they always want us drunk?”

“Intoxication appears to have a tendency to ease social tensions,” Data responded. His own drink was bright blue, speckled with silver flecks that glittered when he swirled the glass. He regarded it for a moment before his eyes flicked – almost casually – back up to her. “On diplomatic missions, it seems a practical tactic to engender affection.”

“Right.” Tasha swallowed hard and pretended to scan the room for concealed weapons behind the elaborate silk tapestries.

“It is not alcoholic.”

“What?”

Data indicated the glass in her hand. “The translation of the native word is ‘flower juice.’ It is usually consumed by the local religious leaders, who take vows of abstinence from all worldly pleasures.”

Tasha sniffed it, and then took a sip, pulling a face that she hid by turning into Data’s chest. “Fuck, it’s sweet.” She studied the glass. “Abstaining from worldly pleasures, huh?”

“They believe desire corrupts the body. There are some remarkable similarities to many old Earth religions.” He paused, and Tasha couldn’t help but smile at the self-conscious look that crossed his face. “Would you like to hear about it?”

“From you, always.” Tasha linked her arm with Data’s, and listened as he dove into a detailed explanation of the socio-religious status of their current hosts.

Later, Tasha rode him hard, their joined bodies almost swallowed in the heap of pillows that made up the bed they’d been given, moonlight from the open window bathing the room in a purple glow. Tasha panted, trying to coax Data into meeting her rough thrusts, goading him into shooting hot and wet inside her, leaving his mark. Tasha stared at her face in the mirror across the room, flushed red beneath her golden hair, moving like an animal, and wondered if corruption wasn’t all that far from the truth.

***

_She’s five years old when she learns the word rape, spat bitterly from the lips of the old woman who is not her mother but might as well be. Yar is tough, the last surviving member of one of the old gangs, and Tasha listens with rapt attention to the stories she tells of men and murder and thievery and rage. “You gotta live first,” she always says. “You make sure you live, no matter what happens to anybody else, you hear me?”_

_Tasha nods dutifully. The tremors are almost gone now, but there are times when she still aches. Part of her wants to ask for joy dust, knowing it’ll make everything better, but Yar hates the stuff. She won’t touch it, and she won’t let Tasha either. So Tasha balls her hands into fists to keep the trembling hidden. She’s getting good with her hands. Yar showed her how to pick a pocket, how to read the signs on the walls that show which places are safe and which should be avoided. She’s a big girl now, and she can take care of herself, and maybe one day she’ll even take care of her baby sister, looked after for now by another woman, this one with a husband to protect her. Husband, Tasha learns, is a word that means the only man who can touch a kind of woman, called a wife._

_“What about sex?” she asks, because she’s still pretty sure it’s important, even if she’s not entirely sure what it means._

_“Sex!” Yar snorts. She slices meat with their knife and doesn’t look at Tasha. “You don’t ever let a man stick his cock inside you, you hear me? Better to cut it off.”_

_Tasha blinks, because this isn’t what her mother says. Said. Before she left. Before joy dust became more important to her than her little girl. “Cock?” she questions, because it’s a new word, one she hasn’t heard before._

_Yar points the knife at her, so suddenly that Tasha jumps and holds still. “All those men out there, they want one thing from you, girl. They want to stick their cock in your cunt and fuck you ‘cause it feels good, feels powerful, and never mind that you would rather kill them than let them touch you. If they ever,_ ever _come at you, you kill them, you hear? ‘Cause once they’re done that’s what they’ll do with you.” She snorts. “One less fucking rape gang is better for all of us.”_

_Tasha clenches her legs together uncomfortably. “What’s the difference between sex and rape?” she asks, because it doesn’t sound like her mother and Yar are talking about the same thing now._

_Yar laughs. It’s a high, bitter sound, and it sits in Tasha’s gut and stays there, like swallowing rocks. “Nothing,” she says eventually. “Not a goddamn thing.”_

***

“Doesn’t it bother you when people touch you?” Tasha asked.

Data looked up at her, surprised. There was something about the new uniform that made him look more dignified than before, less childlike. He tilted his head, and Tasha studied the pips at his collar, high enough now that she couldn’t press kisses to the base of his neck unless she did it through the fabric. “I enjoy it when you touch me,” he said, as if reassuring her.

She shook her head. “I mean, when strangers do it. When they just…grab you. Like they own you, like they have a right to touch you like that.”

Data considered. Finally, he said, “I am used to it.”

And that was something Tasha understood.

***

_“It never happened,” she spits at Data, and turns quickly so she doesn’t have to watch the confused expression bloom across his face. Is that hurt in his eyes? Or is she just imagining it, giving emotion to a machine._

_There’s no hangover, no come down, but she still feels sick. It’s been years since she’s had sex, and the reaction isn’t as strong as she remembers, but there’s a still phantom sensation inside her, a cock moving, cum dribbling out. She wishes her memories were foggy, the way they got when she was high or drunk for real and soaring on sensation alone. Instead, they’re crystal clear. She can picture every ensign she kissed. The flirtatious smile she shot Deanna. Wrapping herself around Data, begging him to fuck her like a joy dust whore, and isn’t it just pathetic that she’s locked those two feelings together now?_

_Pleasure hurts. Sex and rape. High and withdrawal. She throws herself into her workouts and comes away aching, buzzed on endorphins and knowing that at least this pain will make her strong._

_***_

“May I ask a question?”

They were sprawled together in Tasha’s bed, because Data didn’t have one and Tasha was tired of doing this on his sofa. And his desk. And his floor. And, once, against his bathroom wall, the water of the shower dripping over their skin and washing away the grime of an away mission gone wrong.

A bed was nice, Tasha thought. Data was thinking about getting one too.

She turned onto her side, pillowing her head against her arm. “Ask away.”

“Why do you request that I injure you during sex?”

Tasha’s mouth fell open, and it hung there a minute before she managed to close it. Data was watching her, almost unblinking. There was no sign of humor on his face.

Self-consciously, she tugged at the blanket, pulling it up with one hand and hugging it to her chest. “That’s not what I’m asking for.”

“I do not understand.”

Tasha hesitated. “You…you remember the polywater incident, right?”

He nodded.

“You remember what I said to you? After?”

“You said it was gentleness. But I hurt you. I saw the bruises.”

“Wanting it harder doesn’t…it doesn’t mean I want you to hurt me.” Tasha tried to think of a way to explain, avoiding the image of Counselor Troi’s office in her mind. “It can feel good. To be rough.”

“Why?”

“Because I know if I say stop, you will.”

***

_She’s twelve years old and bleeding. It hurts, worse than the shaking used to, the word withdrawal now one she understands and is grateful is over, but somehow she’s still surprised to press a trembling hand between her legs and have it come away wet, red and white swirling together on her fingers. She’s bled there before, naturally, and Yar had shaken her head and in disapproving tones called her a woman. But Yar is dead and Tasha is bleeding and this is different because this time the hurt came from somewhere else._

_She crawls, slowly, to a puddle a few feet away. It’s filthy, but so is everything else, and Tasha gulps water from it and doesn’t mind the taste, because it’s better than the residue on her tongue. When the ripples still, she stares at her reflection, the slight swell of her chest – new and strange – now visible through her torn clothes. Her face is grimy. Her hair is short. She is anything but pretty._

_They wanted her anyway. They had laughed as they’d done it, and said things like “little slut” and “bitch” and “fuck, she must be a virgin, she’s so tight” as they’d crammed themselves into her, one after another, and when Tasha had cried one had shoved himself into her mouth and pressed a knife to her throat, saying, “shut up and suck, and if you bite you’re dead.”_

_You gotta live first, Yar’s words echoed in her ears. You make sure you live, no matter what._

_So she’d sucked, pressing herself into the back of her mind and out of the rest of her body. She almost hadn’t realized when it was over, when the last one had spilled inside her with a groan and pulled out, the men still laughing and slapping each other on the back as they strolled off, scattering into the night, leaving her to come back gradually, to press herself against the wall and hope she isn’t glowing golden in the dark._

_Tasha’s hand finds the knife they had discarded from her, old and dull now, not even worth stealing. She drags it along the stone floor until it sparks and hisses, and examines the edge. Slowly, still leaking blood and cum, she sharpens the knife until it glints in the low light. She studies her reflection in it, sharp and deadly and distorted._

_If she makes it to morning, she decides, she’s going to find every last one of those men and kill them. And no one is ever going to touch her again._

***

“Come in!” Deanna called from the other side of the door. Tasha almost turned around, almost changed her mind and walked away, but then the doors slid open and Deanna smiled at her, serene and beautiful. “Tasha. This is a surprise.”

“Are you busy?” Tasha clasped her hands behind her back, rocking on the balls of her feet. “I can come back another time.”

“No, it’s fine.” Deanna waved her in, beckoning her to sit down. “I don’t have another appointment for an hour. Was there something you wanted to talk about?”

She could lie. Tasha knew how to lie, how to paste on a smile and twist her words into whatever a counselor wanted to hear. It was how she’d gotten by on the _Cochrane._ It was how she’d gotten by until one of the counselors at the Academy had set her straight.

She took a seat, knees pressed together, fiddling with the hem of her sleeve. She didn’t look at Deanna. “It’s about Data.” She stopped and hung her head. “Okay, that’s not…exactly true. It’s about him, but mostly it’s about me.”

“Are you having relationship problems?”

“Not…exactly.” Tasha knew what Deanna expected to hear. Data was an android. How could he be expected to understand the feelings, the nuances necessary to make a relationship work? She looked up, and met Deanna’s eyes. “You’ve read my file, so you know…” She waved a hand vaguely, gesturing to nothing.

Light caught Deanna’s eyes, and she nodded. “This is about Turkana?”

“Maybe?” Tasha clenched her hands together, feeling her fingernails prick crescents into her palms.

“Does it have to do with your sex life? I know speaking to a friend, even in a professional capacity-“

“It’s not that, exactly.” Tasha swallowed. “I didn’t…before Data, I wasn’t sure I’d actually be able to have a sex life. You know, without…” She mimed a bottle, and Deanna nodded again in understanding. Tasha sighed. “It’s _good_. The sex is good. It _feels_ good. I hadn’t thought that was possible since I was a kid.”

“And you’re having trouble reconciling those two thought processes?”

“No. It’s...” Tasha unclenched her fists, forcing them to lay flat against her knees. She sat forward, straightening her back. “What does it mean if I want to tell Data no, and I…I want him to ignore it?”

***

_She’s fifteen and her cat is dead. Her real mother is probably dead and her surrogate mother definitely is. The people who took care of Ishara are dead too, caught in the crossfire of the cadres, and Tasha doesn’t understand how Ishara can choose a glorified gang over her own sister, over freedom from the hell that is Turkana IV._

_Tasha, against all odds, isn’t dead. She’s fifteen and she’s very much alive. The same can’t be said for half a dozen others, the men who Tasha penetrated with her knife, stabbed in the heart because she’s not a coward, watching the life bleed out of them the same way it almost bled out of her three years ago. It’s justified, she thinks. Life is cheap, and she only kills the men who try to touch her. Her books are balanced._

_She’s sitting in the sickbay of a Federation starship, pulling away from the planet where she was born, a blanket wrapped around her shoulders. She’s clean for the first time she can remember, her hair fluffy where the doctor ruffled it with a towel. She gets off the biobed and walks over to the partition, and she doesn’t recognize the girl in the glass staring back at her._

_“Glad to see you’re up and about,” Adin says from the doorway. Tasha looks at the man who saved her, tall and broad and beaming. She’s never seen teeth so white. He pushes off, and steps towards her, and when Tasha backs away, he stops. She’s never seen a man do that before, either._

_“What’s going to happen to me?” she asks._

_He smiles, a foreign expression that Tasha thinks must be kindness. He says, “Whatever you want.”_

***

Tasha never asked what Data wanted. She knew it was selfish on her part. It was almost comical how often Data asked what she wanted, if this was okay, if he should do something else. It wasn’t just during sex, but those were the moments Tasha thought of the most. She wondered what he would ask for, if she let him.

She wondered just how much she would do for him, if he asked.

Tasha thought about her conversation with Deanna. Her friend and counselor’s gentle reassurances and the hand on her knee. “Data?” she asked softly, tracing patterns in the carpet on the floor where her arm was thrown over the side of his sofa, staring up at the ceiling until it blurred. “Do you want to have sex?”

From his computer terminal, Data glanced over to her. “I am completing a report for the captain. If you would like, we can engage in intercourse when I have finished.” It was an amicable tone; if Tasha got up off the sofa, swept the PADDs off Data’s desk, and sat on it instead, Data would oblige her.

“That’s alright,” she said. The ceiling hadn’t changed, but spots danced at the corners of Tasha’s eyes. “I just wondered if you wanted to.”

“Not at the moment.”

Maybe that was why Tasha thought, sometimes, that she would do anything for Data, if only he asked. Maybe it was because he didn’t.

***

_Adin’s body is glistening with sweat and his chest is heaving and Tasha loves this, because this is the only thing she’s good at. She eats so much and so fast in the mess that she’s thrown up twice, hunched over her food and glaring at anyone who looks her way. She can’t sleep in the bed they’ve given her, wide and unprotected, and so sleeps on the floor instead, in the cavity under the desk that she’s still slight enough to fit in if she scrunches up real small. She screams and bites when people brush against her and she won’t talk to the counselors because they’re dumb, all of them stupid if they think they can tell her that what she experienced wasn’t normal, because the only thing that isn’t normal about Tasha is that she’s the one who lived._

_But in the gym, Adin shirtless and Tasha in a tank top, both panting with exertion as they fight, trading vicious blows in what Adin calls a martial art, no one looks at her with pity here. They look at her with awe, Adin most of all._

_Her name is Tasha Yar. She’s a fighter. She’s going to be Starfleet Security when they get to Earth, and maybe, just maybe, she’ll get Adin to be her husband._

_She thinks she could be okay if he touches her. As long as he’s the only one._

***

“Have you spoken to Data about what we talked about?” Deanna asked her, and Tasha started and gave a guilty shake of her head.

“It’s Data,” she said, by way of explanation. “He’s good to me. Too good. He wouldn’t get it.”

“How do you know if you don’t ask? He might surprise you.”

Tasha didn’t have an answer to that. Everything about Data had been a surprise.

***

_She’s twenty-seven years old and she’s not dead. She wakes up staring at the sickbay ceiling, and for a minute panic seizes through her body like lightning. She bolts upright, only for restraints to tug at her wrists, forcing her down. “Easy,” Doctor Crusher says, and bends over the bed, loosening the straps. “You scared us for a minute. Your pulse dropped so low we thought we’d lost you.”_

_Tasha sits up, rubbing her wrists. The sickbay is mostly empty, the lights dim, indicating the ship has shifted into the night rotation. Doctor Crusher taps her combadges and says with a smile, “Doctor Crusher to Commander Data. She’s awake.”_

_At Tasha’s questioning look, she says, “I had to send him away before I tripped on him. Once we got everyone off the planet, he didn’t want to leave your bedside. I had to promise I’d comm him as soon as you woke up.”_

_The sickbay doors slide open and Data crosses the threshold, pausing when he catches sight of her upright. Doctor Crusher points a finger at him, but it’s more amused than threatening. “You get ten minutes, and then Tasha needs to rest. Ten minutes, and not a minute more.” She disappears into her office, and Data approaches the biobed with hesitant steps._

_“I can leave,” he offers._

_“Stay.” She pats the space beside her, and after a moment’s hesitation the android hops up onto the bed. “Armus?” she asks._

_“Abandoned on the planet.”_

_“Good.” She lies back, trying not to let the exhaustion show. Data might be her friend, but Tasha can’t let anybody see her weakness. After a minute, she asks, “Why did you stay with me?”_

_“I do not know.” Data tilts his head. He looks puzzled, and Tasha purses her lips together to keep from smiling. “It seemed…necessary to me, at the time,” he says. “It is a response I have not experienced before.”_

_Tasha thinks the captain would call it human. She knows it’s a thing most people do, sitting by someone’s beside. Waiting for recovery. She wonders when that became something she thought of as normal. As a thing most people do._

_“Thanks,” she says. She takes his hand and squeezes it, and Data looks down at the touch, then back to her face. “Really,” she says. “Thanks for waiting for me.”_

_“You are welcome.”_

***

Normally, poker night was the bridge crew bonding session of choice, but that was unofficial and this wasn’t. Tasha forced herself to look away, hiding her smile when Captain Picard walked onto the holodeck in the appropriate costume for the meeting, because she respected the captain, and she knew the last thing he would want was to be laughed at for wearing a full-length wetsuit at the beach. He wasn’t the only one mostly covered up: Data’s black and blue shorty might have been skin-tight, but it covered everything except his perfectly sculpted forearms and calves. Riker and Geordi, on the other hand, had opted for more traditional swim trunks, although Tasha was convinced Riker had cut his a little higher and tighter than was strictly necessary for the beach. Worf had refused to change out of his uniform, a fact which had Riker and Deanna teasing him mercilessly.

Deanna looked gorgeous as ever in her two-piece, the bottom wrapped around her full hips like a skirt and the top showing off her ample curves, her hair cascading over her shoulders in waves, fluttering in the breeze as she threw her head back and laughed. Even Doctor Crusher, in her modest one-piece and flicking sand playfully at Captain Picard, revealed every inch of her long legs and a low scoop of her back. Tasha wondered if she ought to have shown more skin.

Geordi plunked himself down in the sand beside her, sprawling easily and flexing his toes. “Having fun?”

She laughed, shaking her hair back out of her eyes as the wind plucked at the short locks. “A blast. You?”

“Nah.” Geordi grinned. “It may be fake sand, but it still gets everywhere. I don’t mind a picnic, but give me a field anyway.”

“Or a warp engine?” Tasha teased, and Geordi laughed with her.

He nudged her with his shoulder. “Don’t look now, but I think you’ve got an admirer.”

Tasha followed his gaze to where Riker and Deanna had goaded Worf and Data into volleyball. Every so often, Data snuck a glance her way, once nearly missing the ball because of it. Tasha smiled. She shoved Geordi. “It’s just Data. He’s always like that.”

“I don’t know. As his best friend, I can pretty much guarantee that he’s been a lot happier since you two got together.”

“Data would say he can’t be happy. He’s not programmed to feel emotions.”

“Maybe not programmed, but we both know that doesn’t mean much with Data.” Geordi pulled his legs in, resting his elbows on his knees. “If anyone’s more than the sum of their parts, it’s him.”

Data glanced her way again, and Deanna clapped her hands over her mouth laughing at the ball thwacked Data in the face. He blinked, and Tasha bit her lip, crooking her finger at Data and beckoning him over. Geordi snorted. “Guess that’s my cue to leave.” He gave Tasha’s shoulder a friendly squeeze and hauled himself to his feet, waving a hand and jogging over to the net to sub in as Data came to a halt beside Tasha’s beach towel.

“Are you enjoying yourself?” he asked.

“Not sure beaches are my thing,” Tasha admitted, tugging at the ends of her bathing suit. It was blue and black, like Data’s, but the top cut into a vest, sleeveless and with a v down the middle that offered a peak at her chest. Part of her wished she’d opted for her uniform like Worf, or a wetsuit like the captain. Part of her wished she was in Deanna’s showy bikini.

Data sat cross-legged in the sand beside her. “Would you like me to rub lotion on your back?”

She laughed. “What?”

“Doctor Crusher informed me it was a necessary ritual for skin protection in this location.”

Tasha snuck a glance over towards the doctor, who had turned so that the captain could rub sunscreen across her shoulders. “Alright.” She turned onto her stomach, folding her arms and resting her chin on them, closing her eyes as Data’s hands spread sunscreen on her. “You know, the holodeck safeties are on. I couldn’t get sunburned even if I wanted to.”

“I know.”

Tasha turned over, bopping a dollop of white onto Data’s nose, and choking back a giggle when he went cross-eyed looking at it. “You’re always taking care of me.”

Data rubbed the sunscreen off with a finger, then stroked it onto Tasha’s cheek. “I enjoy taking care of you. It pleases me when you are happy.”

“You make me very happy, Data,” Tasha told him. She pressed her forehead against his, rubbing their noses together in a tease before pecking a kiss to his lips. “And I like making you happy too.”

“It is part of what makes us compatible.”

Tasha laughed. She glanced over at Deanna, who was cheering as she spiked the ball back over the net, dancing across the sand. “It’s part of it,” she agreed. She stood up, holding out her hands for him to take. “Come on. I want to build a sandcastle.”

Data accepted the help up, tilting his head and frowning in confusion. “I do not think sand is the optimal material for construction projects.”

“It really isn’t,” Tasha said. “That’s part of what makes it fun.” She drew him towards the waves, until the sand turned wet under their feet, leaving two pairs of footprints behind them.

***

_Adin groans in pleasure, his hips pumping into her, and Tasha is floating half in and half out of her body as he mounts her like a dog. It doesn’t hurt; Adin stretched her, sliding two fingers into her cunt and twisting, widening her until she was loose enough to take his cock, and now she clenches around him, her body fighting the intrusion in a way that makes Adin grunt and whisper, “Fuck yes, sweetheart, that’s so good.”_

_Tasha is fifteen, and in two days she’s going to see Earth for the very first time. She wants Adin there with her. She’s more than a little drunk – four shots of something that burned going down, acquired from a replicator to calm her nerves – and it’s not joy dust but it makes this bearable, maybe even good._

_She’d come to his quarters late, and Adin had almost turned her away at the door, whispering about his sleeping roommate, but Tasha has a pretty good idea what men want now, and she’d pressed herself against his front and rubbed his cock through his sleep clothes, and Adin had groaned and bucked into the touch, muttering something about “too young” and “shouldn’t,” but he hadn’t pulled away. Tasha had swayed, unsteady from the alcohol, and Adin had taken it as a cue, pulling her to his bunk, still murmuring about “probably fine” and “more mature than Earth girls” and pulling off his pants so she can put her hands on his bare and leaking cock._

_He jolts inside of her, glancing off something that makes Tasha go squeak and go, “ohh!” and his hand covers her mouth, shushing her, and Tasha screws her eyes shut and nods, a good girl, a quiet girl, and she’s so proud that she only kind of wants to throw up when Adin comes inside her with a long, low groan, his hips still twitching in deeper through the aftershocks._

_He sends her away still dripping, his cum sliding down her legs inside her pants, but he sends her away with a kiss, and Tasha can’t remember having one of those before. It’s nice. It makes her lips tingle, and she touches them with two fingers._

_She’s almost surprised when she gets to her quarters and situates herself in the bathtub, pressing her own fingers inside herself to get him out. They don’t come away red at all._

***

“It has been seventeen days, eleven hours since we last engaged in sexual activity,” Data said. “Is something wrong?”

Tasha almost threw her toothbrush at him, a snarl of reproach beading on her lip, but in the mirror, she could see Data standing in the bathroom doorway, and there was nothing accusing in his face. She rested her fists on the sink. “It’s nothing.”

He appeared to understand something, and his expression became more earnest. “I am not attempting to convince you, if you are not ‘in the mood.’ It is simply a deviation from our norm, and I wanted to…check in.”

Tasha spat into the sink and turned around, leaning back against the countertop. “I appreciate it. But I promise, nothing’s wrong.”

“You would tell me if it was?”

Whoever thought Data didn’t care was an idiot, Tasha thought. She smiled faintly. “I’d try.”

***

_Federation Immigration wants to send her back to Turkana IV. Tasha would do anything not to let that happen. She thinks about her mother, on her knees, and wonders if her freedom can be traded for like food._

_In the end, she doesn’t have to. Turkana doesn’t want her._

***

At the bridge science station, Tasha brushed her fingers along Data’s back. “We need to talk.” It was easier to say without seeing his face.

Data paused, his fingers stilling on the terminal. “Right now?”

She moved her fingers lower, stopping just shy of the space he had shown her, the button that could turn him off and on again. “No,” she decided. “This isn’t the place. My quarters, tonight.”

Data opened his mouth to respond, but Tasha had already moved away, stepping back to the tactical station beside Worf.

“Make an appointment with him,” Deanna had suggested. “Set aside a time to talk, so you know you can’t back out.”

She’d scheduled their appointment. And Tasha wasn’t one for backing down.

***

_Her roommate at Starfleet Academy is Lauren, who doesn’t mind that Tasha has to see a counselor twice a week and still sleeps in a nest of blankets on the floor and failed the Ethics class by disagreeing and laughing her way through it. Tasha thinks Lauren’s pretty, but she never sees her with a boy._

_Lauren laughs when she asks. “I don’t like boys,” she explains. “I like girls.”_

_Later, she’ll kiss Tasha when they’re both a little drunk, and Tasha will realize that maybe she likes girls too. When she’s sober, she’ll wretch in the bathroom at the memory of someone else’s hand between her legs, contradicted by the soft press of Lauren’s lips across her face, and wonder if she only thinks she likes girls because they’re not as bad as men._

_She hasn’t seen Adin in four years, but she still gets his letters. She doesn’t know if that means something or not._

***

They’d been crewmates and friends for over three years, together for nearly two. Longer than Lauren. Longer than any of the flings Tasha had chased at the Academy, desperate to feel, and longer even than Adin, if Tasha didn’t count the times they were apart, and she wasn’t sure she did, wasn’t sure Adin had thought of her more than in passing. That is what Tasha told herself, pacing the floor of her quarters, waiting for Data’s arrival.

Data loved her. She was certain of that, even if the android himself wasn’t. And she loved him, the right way this time, for all the right reasons. Deanna was right. Data wouldn’t judge her. She could ask for what she wanted.

***

_“We were…intimate,” Data says. Tasha finds out from Riker, who takes her aside after the meeting to explain._

_“It’s proof that Data can care about someone,” he says. “It won’t leave the room, I promise.”_

_Tasha doesn’t know how the captain knew – Data keeps no pictures of her, no notes – but that doesn’t matter. Data is her friend, and Tasha would kiss him (would hold him, would_ love _him) in front of the judge if it meant that Data’s body, his life, was his own. Because Tasha knows how it feels to be a vessel for someone else, and that’s one part of humanity that she hopes Data never experiences._

_At the celebration, when Data tries to apologize, Tasha kisses him on the cheek, and he looks at her in wonder. “I’m glad you’re alright,” she says._

_In her quarters that night, she presses her fingers between her legs, remembering Data’s skin against her own, and wonders if people will say that she only likes Data…only_ loves _Data…because he’s not fully a man._

***

“I do not understand,” Data said. They were pressed together on Tasha’s bed, sitting at the edge. Tasha had one of Data’s arms wrapped up in her own. She traced the shifting tendons of his fingers with her hands.

“It’s a security thing,” she said.

“Do you not feel safe with me?”

“No! I mean, yes!” Tasha looked up at him, inwardly begging for him to understand. She took a breath. “I’ve talked to Deanna about it. It’s not…unusual for someone like me. It’s a way to take control of a situation that we didn’t used to have control over. A way to…make it make sense. With someone we trust.”

“You have been hurt badly before. You said that your previous sexual experiences, before we became intimate, had been…’messed up’?”

The laugh punched out of Tasha’s throat before she could choke it back. “I didn’t always cope well,” she agreed. Data’s hands were soft, and she threaded their fingers together. “I thought giving people what they wanted, even if it hurt me, would show I cared about them. Or…or that I was strong enough.” She shook her head. “This isn’t like that. This is something I want, for me. If you don’t want to do it…”

“It is not a matter of want.” Data’s gaze was steady, even if she couldn’t meet it. “My programming is not designed to accommodate a request like this. I do not think Doctor Soong anticipated a scenario where my sexuality programming would interact with my morality programming in this way. However,” he added, “I would be willing to try.”

Tasha lifted her chin to meet his eyes. “Really?”

“It is something you want. I find I am not adverse to attempting to accommodate it.”

“You’re sure?” she pressed. “If it makes you uncomfortable-“

“I would like to research the subject further,” Data admitted. “But, with the proper precaution, I believe it could be quite pleasurable. For both of us.”

***

_“He was your lover?” Data asks, when the situation on Treva has been resolved._

_Tasha doesn’t know how to answer. She settles on, “We were intimate.”_

_“You chose to arrest him.”_

_“And you managed to exonerate him.” Part of her wishes he hadn’t found the evidence that set Adin free. Whatever else he had or hadn’t done, he’d fucked a fifteen-year-old girl, a girl he’d known was scared and hurting. Tasha had been driven by survival, ingrained by a planet she now hates for twisting her inside. She hadn’t known any better._

_Adin had._

***

“No!” Tasha said, and Data stopped. Tasha faltered. “Data?”

“Apologies.” He inclined his head. “My sexuality program is designed to go offline at this kind of resistance. I am attempting to bypass the system.” He had that distant look in his eyes, the one Tasha associated with him accessing internal systems. He refocused. “Would you like to try again?”

She nodded. He took a step forward, and she scrambled back. “Wait!”

Data froze. He took a step away from her.

Tasha slumped and sat on the bed. “This isn’t working, is it?”

Data took a seat beside her. “It appears not.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It is not a promising first attempt.”

“First attempt?”

Data nodded. “Geordi and I have had some success reprogramming some of my subprograms before. With his help, I may be able to manually correct for the error.” He hesitated. “If that is alright with you.”

Tasha considered. “It’s alright with me,” she decided. She kissed him, first on the corner of his lips, and then fully when he turned his head. Data went pliant beneath her, and she smiled, throwing a leg over his lap, pushing him down to the bed.

“Tasha?”

She trailed kisses along his jaw, slow and sensual, one hand braced on his chest. When she got to his ear, she whispered, “Just because we can’t play that game doesn’t mean we can’t have fun.” She paused. “If that’s what you want?”

Data was hardening beneath her. She could feel him pressing between her legs, through the clothes, and he although he couldn’t blush like her, he looked almost embarrassed when he admitted, “I would like that.”

“Me too,” Tasha grinned, snaking a hand between them to knead at the growing bulge in his pants, relishing the way it made Data’s lips part and his eyelids droop as he panted. “You’re so responsive, baby.”

Her name broke on his lips when she slipped her hand inside to stroke him, and when he reached out for her, she pinned his hand to the bed. “Later,” she cooed, smothering his protests with kisses. “Let me take care of you.”

***

_“Alcohol is a drug, you know.”_

_Tasha stares at the counselor, the latest in a line of Starfleet shrinks assigned to her case. “What?” she says._

_The counselor crosses her legs, one over the other, drawing Tasha’s gaze. Tasha likes women, she’s decided, and it has absolutely nothing to do with how she feels about men._

_“It’s classified as a drug,” the counselor says, “like joy dust.”_

_“But-“_

_“Consumed in moderation, there don’t have to be any adverse effects.” She surveys Tasha, who suddenly feels five years old again, and hurting. “Used as a coping mechanism, however…”_

_Tasha realizes: she’s never having sex again._

***

Geordi grabbed her arm gently when Tasha passed through engineering. “Can I talk to you for a minute?”

Geordi was tactile – the whole bridge crew was, really – but Tasha didn’t mind the touch. She relaxed into it. “Can it wait? I’ve got a security meeting with Worf in twenty minutes.”

“It won’t take long.”

She nodded, and he pulled her off to the side, into one of the little alcoves of flashing lights and circuitry. “It’s about Data.”

“Has he talked to you?”

Geordi nodded. “Is everything okay with you two?”

Tasha swallowed. She felt her gaze drop to the floor, and forced herself to lift her chin. “We’re good. Better than good. That’s not what this is about.”

“You’re sure? What he’s asking me to do…”

Tasha took both his hands in both of hers, squeezing tight. “He’s asking you because I asked him. Please don’t be weird about this. He’d do it alone, but it’s complicated work, and he needs help.”

“Alright.” Geordi looked away, and then back at her. “I know it’s none of my business, really. But you’re my friend too. I just want to make sure you’re alright.”

“I’m alright,” she promised. “But I appreciate the effort.”

***

_Adin is back at the Academy, in Tasha’s Advanced Security Techniques course. He fucks her in the back of the library with a hand over her mouth and in his city apartment without, but Tasha is a good girl and knows better than to make a sound. Study breaks, Adin calls it with a laugh, and Tasha takes to studying tipsy, because she can’t maintain the information if she’s drunk and she can’t let him touch her if she’s sober and she wants to graduate as much as she wants him._

_“Wait,” she tells him once, the word half-obscured as her voice breaks, her back pressed up against the wall of a closet at a Starfleet Academy Christmas party as Adin thrusts inside her, his face against her neck as he grunts with the effort._

_He keeps pumping, his grip on her going hard. “Hang on, sweetheart, I’m so close.”_

_“But what if-“_

_“Shh.” And then his hand is covering her mouth again, his hips stuttering as he pushes himself over the edge. “So fucking good,” he groans as he comes. “Every time, sweetheart, so fucking good.”_

***

When they’d first gotten together, Tasha had given Data a list of rules to commit to his perfect memory. No part of him got to go inside her, not even his fingers, but he could touch her while she fingered herself. She didn’t do blowjobs. She didn’t want him to talk.

It had been good. The list had changed. He could put himself inside her, but he wasn’t allowed to come. He could talk, but nothing dirty. She’d blow him if he wanted, but she didn’t want to choke.

“You are quiet,” Data had told her once.

She’d snorted. “What, you want me to talk?”

He’d looked surprised. “Yes.”

“Why?”

“Your reactions help me to better gauge what you find pleasurable.”

She’d learned that Data could orgasm without ejaculating. That he liked oral, but liked performing it on her better. They’d been together almost a year when she’d whispered, “Come inside me, baby,” and Data had paused to ask if she was sure.

Now she handed Data another list, and his eyes scanned down it, brow furrowed. “You are sure you want me to say these things?”

“Only in this context.”

He nodded. “I will add them to the program.”

“It’s going well?”

“We are making progress.” He handed back a different PADD to her, this one half filled in. “I thought it best to use safewords, so that either of us can pause or end the scene if we need to.”

Tasha stared at the screen, committing his to memory. She drummed her fingers for a moment, and then filled in ‘Armus’ and ‘Cochrane’ inside the blanks.

***

_Tasha lets Adin fuck her sober and hates every minute of it. She fakes orgasm and fights not to throw up in the bathroom after he comes and wonders how he doesn’t notice that something is very wrong. Part of her still loves him and wants to be his wife. Part of her still thinks that one man is better than being alone._

_She graduates with honors and declines the afterparty. Her classmates are getting drunk to celebrate. Instead, she spends the evening on her back, half in and half out of her body, contemplating vulnerability long after Adin has tired himself out and gone to sleep._

***

“There had to be parameters,” Data explained. “My morality programming is embedded more deeply than any other. It is almost impossible to adjust.”

“But you were able to do it?”

“Yes and no.” Data patted the sofa next to him, and it was such a delightfully human gesture that Tasha had to smile. When she sat, he continued, “We could not alter the programming itself. However, we were able to input some exceptions.”

“Meaning?”

“The response is coded to your image. It cannot be triggered by anyone else.”

“What if they look like me?” Tasha teased.

Data cocked his head. “No one looks like you.” When she raised her eyebrows, he said, “They do not. I am capable of cataloguing even minute differences in appearance, bearing, and vocal patterns. Even when making adjustments for variation, it is almost impossible for me to confuse one humanoid with another. Because I am so well acquainted with you, the probability is even less likely.”

“Aww,” Tasha grinned. “What else?”

“You will have to activate the subroutine. I cannot do it myself, and it will not be the default for sexual activity. That way we cannot activate it inadvertently, and I cannot activate it with malicious intent.”

Somehow, Tasha doubted the latter would be a problem. “How do I do that? Is it like a voice command, or…?”

“There can be options.” Data passed her a PADD with schematics, and scrolled past the technical pieces to the laymen’s terms at the bottom. “The program is currently locked. Once we decide on the activating commands, Geordi and I can input them, and the program should be functional. From there, we can make updates to it as needed.”

“You’ve been thorough.”

“I am always thorough. But this particular task required extra diligence. I did not want to get it wrong.”

Tasha leaned her head against his shoulder. “You’re too good to me, Data.”

“I disagree. I prefer to think that I am ‘good enough.’”

She laughed, and for that kissed him. When she settled back again, she said, “Alright. What kind of activation sequence do we want?”

***

 _She decides she’s not marrying Adin – not that she thinks that was ever an option, not anymore – the same day she agrees to serve under him on the_ Starbound _for a training voyage before her real posting. She means to break up with him at the end, so as not to distract from the mission at hand. Then Orions are attacking and the whole crew is dead, and Tasha is a first officer well before she ever thought she’d have to be, even if there’s no one to command._

_Adin comes to her quarters, visibly shaken, and Tasha thinks about turning him away. She’s tired. But Adin looks close to tears, and he keeps whispering about how they’re dead, they’re all dead, and how can he be sure that he and Tasha really made it out alive?_

_She lets him in, maybe because she feels sorry for him for not understanding that this is just life, and maybe because she’s starting to think that it isn’t. He doesn’t fuck her, just frots against her hip while Tasha pets his hair and stares at the empty bunk above her, and at least she can sleep in a bed now, but she still prefers a smaller space. He only makes a half-hearted attempt to return the favor, and when she pushes his hand away, he doesn’t question it._

_Then they get back to the Starbase, and Adin is arrested for conspiracy and sabotage and sentenced to time in a Federation Rehabilitation Facility by the court. He snarls at her on the way out, calling her a bitch and a whore and who did she think she was for setting him up like that? and Tasha is a little indignant that he’s trying to blame her for this, but part of her is grateful that she doesn’t have to make the effort to say no to him later._

_Mostly she’s just tired._

_Adin escapes, she learns a few hours later, disappearing without a trace. Well, Tasha thinks, that’s life._

***

Tasha hadn’t been able to stop fidgeting since dinner, restless energy burning through her body. Just before their morning shifts, Data had informed her that the program was installed and ready. “Tonight,” she’d whispered, kissing his cheek before they stepped onto the turbolift together. She knew Data measured time internally, as a fixed constant, but she couldn’t help but wonder if he was as impatient as she was.

“You are pacing,” Data informed her, setting aside his report. Tasha had one in her own hands, pecking at it as she stalked across the carpet. She set hers aside too.

“I’m ready,” she said. “I want to do it now.”

“If you are certain.”

“I am. Are you?”

Data nodded. He stood up, crossing the room to her, and paused a few inches away. “May I…make a request?”

“Anything.”

Data reached out, hesitated, and then cupped her cheek. He kissed her, sweetly, as gentle as the first time. When he pulled away, Tasha swayed, trying to catch her breath, watching him step several paces back. “Now?” she asked.

“Now.”

She swallowed hard and took a deep breath, lifting her chin. Deliberately, she turned away. “My safeword is Armus. Yours is Reichenbach. I’m ready for you to hurt me.”

***

_She’s twelve years old and a man is inside her for the first time, pinning her body to the ground while his friends laugh and jostle each other, impatient for their turn, and Tasha screams as something in her body tears and gives way to the press of his cock, crying “no!” and “stop!” and “please!” to deaf ears. She doesn’t want this. They don’t care. This, Tasha realizes, is the tangible meaning of the word rape._

***

Hard hands seized Tasha’s wrists and twisted, and Tasha cried out as she was slammed up against a wall face-first, her head colliding just shy of painful with the bulkhead. “Data?”

“Don’t resist.” His voice was low, colored darkly, and Tasha’s whole body gave a throb because she hadn’t known Data could ever sound like that. He grabbed at her hip, hauling her backwards to grind against his crotch, already hard and insistent against her, and it took a moment for Tasha to find her voice in the shock.

“Wait!” she said. She fought the hold, and then yelped as she tumbled forward, Data throwing her roughly towards the bedroom.

“No,” he snarled. Tasha almost didn’t turn, but then his hands were on her again, shoving her onto the bed with fingers at her throat, pinching hard enough that she could barely breath, and Tasha had to look at his face, set into a mask of twisted glee and rage. His eyes were cold. “Spread your legs,” he spat, and when Tasha didn’t, he forced her to, wrenching her knees apart. “I said, spread your legs, _whore_.”

The word shot through her, and Tasha inhaled sharply, unable to react as Data shoved his pants down, and Tasha registered that they were still in uniform, Data’s cock curving up against the black, shining golden and darkening to ochre at the tip. “Please,” she begged, and the word came out mangled. “Data, stop.”

He ignored her, dragging her hips back and tossing her onto her front, so Tasha hit the mattress for a second time, barely able to inhale without the chokehold before the breath was knocked out of her again. He tore at her pants until they tangled around her knees, straddling her legs and bending over her back to bite at her earlobe. “Slut,” he hissed in her ear, and Tasha choked back a sob. “You’re going to feel so good.”

Tasha fought not to arch as a finger forced its way inside her, meeting resistance only when she clenched around it, trying to push it out, slick starting to leak down the insides of her thighs as it twisted for a moment and then withdrew, and then something thicker was shoving its way between her legs as Data mounted her, rubbing the head of his cock against the lips of her cunt.

“You want it,” he told her. “You want to be fucked like a bitch.”

“No!”

“Yes, you do. Inside. It’s all you think about, you filthy fucking whore.” Data’s fingernails dug into her hips, raking red marks into the skin. “It’s alright. I’ll give you what you really want. I’m going to make you scream.”

He did; Tasha screamed when Data slammed himself inside her, the way barely slicked by her fluids and his, and Tasha knew that Data could self-lubricate on command but she had still expected it to hurt more as he bottomed out in one savage thrust. She clamped her body down around him, thrashing under his hands, but Data had android strength, and he didn’t budge. “That’s it. Fuck back on my cock.”

“Data, I said no!” There were tears in her eyes.

“You did,” he agreed. “I don’t care.”

And then he moved, and Tasha screamed again as he started to _fuck_ , and even when they’d been rough it was nothing like this. Data was a _machine_ , in the most literal sense of the word, drilling into her with unforgiving slams of his hips, his cock dragging inside her and lighting up nerve endings until Tasha thought she might combust. He panted in her ear and smeared a sloppy, tongue-filled kiss across her cheek. “Filthy slut, but you’re virgin tight. Gonna make me come before I can really enjoy myself.”

“ _Please_.”

“Please keep fucking you?” Data’s teeth dragged against her neck. He swiveled his hips, glancing off a spot that knocked stars out of orbit behind Tasha’s eyelids. “Please treat you like the slut we both know you are?”

“ _Please stop. I don’t want it._ ”

“That’s a lie. You want this. You want it so badly you have to fight me for it.” Data’s voice was breaking, hitched with grunts, and Tasha thought she knew what Data sounded like during sex, but every new noise went straight to her cunt, pulsing and hot. “I’ll show you you want it,” Data hissed. “I’ll prove it to you, whore.”

One of his hands pushed between her legs, thumbing her clit, and Tasha grabbed for it. “Cochrane, baby, Cochrane.” Data froze inside her, hands going slack and Tasha fought to catch her breath, twisting back to press reassuring kisses on his face. “Don’t make me come. I don’t want to come until after.”

He nodded and removed his fingers, placing them back on her hip. Tasha let her body fall forward again, braced against the mattress. “Okay, you can go.”

The change was tangible even before the thrusting began. The gentle grip hardened and his breath came, hot and wet against her cheek. She could hear a grin in his voice as his pace picked up, pounding back into her. “I’m gonna fill you up. I’m gonna come inside you so deep it won’t come out, so deep you’ll be marked. You want me to ruin you, slut? Think anyone else will want to touch you when I’m done?”

Tasha keened, fighting to push down groans, squeezing her eyes shut. She was grounded in her body, held down by a million points of pleasure. Data’s cock, thick and hard and sliding inside her with every brutish thrust. His hands, scouring marks into her skin. His teeth and lips and tongue, leaving bruises and bite marks along her neck and shoulders, savage even through the fabric. Her throat felt like it was bubbling, and as if reading her mind Data reared back, hauling her with him so it stabbed him deeper in, forced her farther down on his cock, his hand going back to her throat and closing around it, cutting off her air until her head spun.

“Ready for it?” he panted. “I’m gonna come, are you ready? God, you’re so good, so tight for me, I can’t last much longer.”

She pushed at him weakly, trying to shake her head, but she was held in place, not just by his hands but by the physicality of their bodies, everything centered on where they were joined, where he was moving inside of her, claiming her like a beast. His hips stuttered. They didn’t have to, Data was a machine, but Tasha felt them stutter, and couldn’t help the urge to spread herself wider, give him the room to move, and Data slammed home and came, groaning with pleasure as he pumped burning cum deep into her cunt, filling her in waves until Tasha thought she’d drown for sure.

***

_She’s twenty-six years old. She’s been sober almost five years and celibate nearly four. She likes her work and she does it well and the people serving under her treat her with respect, men included. She accepts the flagship’s offer of Security Chief, and she’s honored but not surprised. The bridge crew is still getting to know each other but they’re kind, and Tasha doesn’t flinch when they pat her on the shoulder after a job well done._

_When she’d met the android second officer, he’d smiled at her, and Tasha had thought it looked fake, like he’d practiced it in front of a mirror but didn’t know what it meant. She also realizes it look a little realer every day, and she gets caught, sometimes, in the wonder in his eyes._

_Tasha doesn’t do relationships. She knows how to take care of herself. But some nights, when the bed feels too big and her body too far away, she pushes a hand between her thighs and touches herself, thinking of mechanically precise fingers and unguarded yellow eyes._

_It doesn’t count, she thinks. He’s not a man in any way that matters._

_She’s twenty-six years old, and fantasies are all she wants._

***

Tasha came down to soft hands stripping her methodically, and she cracked open an eye to watch Data fold her uniform and place it at the end of the bed beside his own. She reached out a hand, making grabbing motions with what little dexterity she had left. “Come here.”

Data obliged, wrapping his arms securely around her back so Tasha could snuggle into his chest, pausing only to drag a blanket up over them both. “Computer, temperature up two degrees.”

“Shh,” she murmured, closing her eyes again. Data’s chest was smooth, and she rubbed her cheek against it. “No talking for a minute.”

He didn’t respond, his thumbs stroking idle patterns into her skin. Tasha thought, with a touch of amusement, that the movements felt like hearts.

“That was good,” she said eventually. Her whole body was buzzing, but there was no nausea. Her skin was alive, but it wasn’t crawling. She was simply electricity, calming at his touch. “Really good,” she amended when he didn’t respond. She looked up into his face. “Thank you.”

“I am glad you liked it.”

“Did you? Like it?”

Data nodded. “More than anticipated.”

“Yeah?”

“I expected more discomfort from my morality program when I deactivated the subroutine. The physical sensations were pleasant, and I found I…enjoyed responding to you this way.” He tilted his head, his hair fanning out against the pillow. “Did you get what you needed from it?”

“I’ll admit, part of me was a little afraid.” Tasha leaned in so she could press her forehead against Data. Skin contact was soothing, and she relished every inch of it. “But I trusted you. And it was…hot. Hearing you saying those things…” She shivered, squeezing her legs together as a pulse went through her too soon. “I wasn’t sure how I’d react, actually hearing them. Actually…actually feeling you do it. It’s not always as good in real life as in the fantasy, you know? There was always the risk that it’d be too close to home, in a bad way. If…if you’d told me to be quiet, or covered my mouth, I think it might have been.”

“Would you like me to explicitly bar those actions from the program?”

She shook her head. “Leave it for now. That’s…something to think about, some other time.”

He traced his fingers over her shoulder and down her hip. “You will have bruises.”

“Is that okay?”

“As long as they do not make you uncomfortable.”

“They don’t.” She rubbed her throat absently. It still felt rough from his hand. “Could I have some water, please?”

He fetched it for her, and helped her sit up to drink it in slow sips. “Is there anything else you require?”

She set the glass aside. “One more thing.” She drew him back down beside her on the bed, taking his hand between her own and pressing his fingers against her cunt, still slick with his cum and her own wetness. He curled them inside her at her nudging, and Tasha let go in favor of wrapping her arms around his neck, her face tucked into his shoulder as Data coaxed her body slowly and gently to orgasm.

“Better?” he asked softly, when she’d finished shaking.

She nodded.

“Would you like to shower?”

She shook her head and clung to him tighter. “In a minute.”

“I can carry you, if you would like.”

Tasha forced her eyes back open, blinking at him lazily. A slow smile spread across her lips. “Yeah? You gonna bathe me too?”

“If you would like.”

“Alright,” she agreed. “Just don’t stop touching me, yeah?”

Data smiled too, small and shy. “I find I do not want to.” He lifted her carefully, cradling her body as easily as if she were the blanket on the bed, and carried her into the bathroom. Tasha let her eyes fall closed again, leaving herself in his capable hands.

***

_It starts simply enough._

_Data is her friend, and a good man. Tasha admires his strength, but even more so she admires his kindness. This is not a fantasy. It may no longer even qualify as a crush, but something deeper, something Tasha has felt before and yet never this way, never this deep._

_“You care for me,” Data says when she tells him, and even though his face is not the most expressive, Tasha can see wonder in his eyes. It makes her feel beautiful._

_She nods, stepping closer to him, because they’re in her quarters and no one can see them, and Tasha wants nothing more than to be pulled in by his gravity. He tilts his head down to hold her gaze. “I care for you too,” he says. He hesitates. “This is how you initiate a relationship, correct?”_

_“Almost,” Tasha smiles. “There’s a human expression, ‘sealing it with a kiss.’”_

_“Sealing it with a kiss?” he echoes back._

_Tasha taps her lips with one finger, and Data understands. He takes a step into her space, tilting his head and bending to press a soft kiss to her mouth. It is almost achingly gentle; Tasha has seen Data throw two-hundred-pound men around like ragdolls, has seen him lift debris several times his own weight over his head without strain. He’s holding back, and Tasha loves him for it._

_“Harder,” she murmurs, looking up into innocent yellow eyes blinking back at her. “I’m not going to break.”_


End file.
